


Birthday bash 2017

by kitsune13tamlin



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender, Voltron: Vehicle Voltron
Genre: Gen, twinganes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-01
Updated: 2018-03-01
Packaged: 2019-03-25 15:02:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 5,843
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13837248
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kitsune13tamlin/pseuds/kitsune13tamlin
Summary: so it was Shiro's (kinda) birthday.  And why celebrate a day when you can celebrate an entire week?  A fic a day, some short, some long, to explore and celebrate a one of a kind guy.





	1. Maybe Tomorrow

He’s been told that every cut and wound on your body can resurface.  That no matter how long they have been healed, no matter how invisible they are to the eye, that if the right triggers happen, every old wound will reopen again.  

Because the body never forgets where its been hurt.

He looks at himself in the mirror after his shower, while the steam hangs heavy in the air, clouds his lungs, clouds the glass, and he can’t see himself so much as the ghost of himself.  The ghost has no scars.  The ghost has no real features, indistinct, ,filling a ‘him’ sized space without being real.  It’s large and ‘Shiro’ colored and it moves when he moves but the only visible mark on it is the white in the hair on top of his head that stands out even in hazy ghost glass form.  Everything else is faded, erased out of existence.  He wants to ask the ghost shape if it dreams or if those have been gently blurred away as well.  He reaches up with his hand, wipes the condensation away and sees his own face looking back at him, lean body still foggy and vague but the eyes are there now, evening star and morning fog and sea mist and shadows, and they know too much when they look back at him.  He taps the reflected cheek with two knuckles, warm, wet glass and smiles a little.  There he is.  That’s him.

And one day all his wounds may reopen and spill him across the floor for the entire world to see - 

but it isn’t today.

Because today he turns away and reaches for a black bodysuit that fits under white armor and a white and black helmet with a trace of glowing blue.  

Today he is a paladin of the Black lion.  Today the scars stay inside.  

Today he can make a difference.


	2. I Once Was Lost

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So, y’all came blame this one entirely on [Cocopops1995](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Cocopops1995/pseuds/Cocopops1995) who is far too good at finding appropriate songs and [shared this one](https://youtu.be/m6TXPNybrmk) with me in regards to the twins. Be prepared, my throat got all tight watching the video. It’s an amazingly effective one for Ryou and Shiro though and - well - my mind immediately went a bit ‘what if’ on this one. Hope y’all approve.

There were two of him once.

Or rather, two of _them_.

Shiro has a brother he’s never met.  Because his brother never lived.

He’s one half of a set of twins - and he’s the only half that survived.

He doesn’t think about it often, not now, not as an adult.  It was more real to him, more of a lack when he was a child, lonely at home with busy adults, isolated by his fierce drive in his studies and his need to achieve perfection.  Sometimes…. sometimes he wonders if he’s been trying to make up for it.  Living while his twin died.  If he’s trying to prove he was worth it - or they were worth it - or that maybe he was the one that was meant to live.

What happens to you, unborn and floating in darkness with only your brother’s corpse for company?  How does that change you, deep deep inside the primal ocean of you, before you ever even see the light of day or draw your first breath?  How much of your sibling absorbed into you, was born through you, after you had shared the same amniotic fluid, the same womb, with their body?

Did your soul feel it when the life left them, so close to you in the dark, the other half of you flickering out like a dying light until there was no third beat in the darkness to match your heart and your mother’s broken one?

Was there nothing in the womb - or did everything start there?

Takashi Shirogane is one half of a whole that’s never existed.  And he tries not to think about it - ship dying, life support failing, buried in the bottomless swell of the darkness between ancient stars that don’t care and never will.  The lights on the console fade out for the last time and he hears the hiss of air one last time through the tubes in his helmet as the respirator fails.  His breath fogs the shield of his helmet and in the silence he listens.  Listens like he’s done far too many nights, listens the way he’s always refused to admit he’s listening.  He listens to the slowing beat of his heart -

and he listens, straining, to see if, just once more, he will hear a second heart next to his in the dark.

 

 


	3. Anti-gravity

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Let’s go back a bit in time, shall we?

He remembers.

He remembers the first time he saw space. 

Not in the simulators.  He was working fast toward mastering those already, forcing them to come up with new programs for the first time in years just to keep up with him.  And not from the ground or in the holo-observatory.  But the first time he truly saw space, without the Earth’s protective atmosphere in the way, just stars and as one of his friends called it ‘the Eternal Forever’.  

It had been a training run.  They were all far enough advanced along the pilots track by that point that the field had already narrowed down and the class sizes were getting smaller each year as the harsh courses winnowed out the ones that weren’t made for the high stress and demand of space piloting.  It had only been a supply run to the moon colony, nothing fancy at all, but for most of them - almost all of them, it was their first time in space.

Takashi’s heart had almost floated right out of his body when they’d cleared atmo and gravity had stopped being a law so much as a vague suggestion.  Space!  He was really in space!  And as mature as he was supposed to be by that age, he’d still pressed his hands against the glass to feel the retreating heat of ascension and the growing cold of space.  Stars…. and the eternal forever of the black between them.  His stomach had twisted painfully - and he’d felt as if he were coming home….

The lack of gravity had given him a bit of a problem.  Training in the pool and the jet drop were one thing but none of them, except Lisa who had been born on the moon colony, were really used to the lack of the Earth’s steady pull.  _She_ had been elegant and contained, no extra effort expended beyond what was needed, reminding him of a mermaid that swam through space instead of water.  _He’d_ moved a lot like a ping pong ball with bad stabilizers and it was a good thing the shuttle was used to training flights and most everything was padded or tucked safely away.  He spent a lot of time against walls or hanging from a seat.  The only salvage to his pride was the rest of his class, minus one, pretty much did the same thing and by the end there was a bit of laughter when they bounced harmlessly off each other accidentally.  It had been the strangest sense of relief, stress lifting off his shoulders and the back of his neck where it had seemed to have settled and grown with each year, as if it wasn’t just his body that was freed to drift.  He’d ended up by the back window, tucked a bit so that his growing body had wedged, relaxed and watching the stars and the occasional turn of the Earth below when it came into view.  Quiet. At peace. 

He got better at it.  Handling the lack of gravity.  Of course he did.  He was born to be a pilot after all.  In time he moved through three dimensional space as easily as he did through two when he was ground bound.  But he never, quite, got over the sheer release each time he broke orbit somewhere and left the literal weight of the world behind him.  He never really wanted to.  

He remembers…. 

And then the giant doors in front of him open again, and the garish sickly light shines in and threatens his eyes as the smell of sand and sweat and blood wash in and the roar of the crowd is the sound of hells gates opening.  The memory vanishes with the dark and Shiro strides out onto the sand, hating every second of it but determined.

He will still move in three dimensional space despite the artificial gravity of this hell hole. Because he is an astronaut.  A space pilot.  And one day he will find a way to escape back into the Eternal Forever and leave the clawing weight of this place behind.

He swears it.


	4. It's the Little Things

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> every now and then I like to give myself incredibly stupid little writing challenges and one I enjoy wrestling with is ‘can I tell a story with nothing but dialogue’? The answer to this is usually no. But I enjoy trying. So nothing deep or emotionally impacting today. Shiro is getting a fictional break for his birthday week today. Just some silly twingane twinganess. Who says you have to talk to get each other?

“Taks” the back of the used junk mail envelope stuck to the Garrison issue dorm fridge with an ‘I went to NASA and all I got was frozen ice cream’ magnet reads.  “Milk”

Scribbled underneath it is a slightly less angular:

“No.”

Its followed by the first handwriting with a terrible drawing of a kitten that reads: 

“Pweeese.”

That lasts for a day. That night there’s an empty cereal box taped to the fridge with ducktape and in the less angular handwriting, in sharpe across it, is written:

“Not until I stop finding empty cereal boxes put back on the shelf.”

The next day there’s a pen embedded in the empty box.  The end of the day sees several more pens, a butter knife that someone apparently didn’t use for its proper purposes if its new form is any indication, a single chopstick, two still wrapped lollypops and a slightly wilted flower also embedded in the box.

That morning there’s a pair of slightly linty keys hanging from their slightly mangled chain from one of the pens.

The keychain is gone within the hour with a hastily scrawled note in the better handwriting of:

“thanks” on the box.

That evening there’s a sticky note with the same poorly drawn kitten doing what is probably meant to be drinking milk - or guzzling it if the way the gallon jug is tipped up like a reverse kegger is any indication.  Two little ‘x’s are scribbled underneath.

There’s a new Galaxy Garrison magnet holding it in place the next morning.  One that says ‘GG: We’re _OUT OF THIS WORLD!_ ’

 

Two days later there’s another empty cereal box ducktaped meticulously to the fridge directly under the last one with a very big sharpe marked frowning face, complete with fangs, on it.


	5. Shouldn't You Shed More?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> inspired by all those lovely fanartists that bury Shiro in cats

He’s asleep in a curled position when the first cat visits.

He’s in the closet - it was a long day full of generally bad things and he just - the bed is too open and exposed.  The closet is safer.  He knows he’ll wake up a bit sore in the morning, he knows that his legs will be a little stiff until the cramped muscles loosen but - at least he’ll sleep.  If he’s in the closet.  

The door of it stays open though.  He’s figured out the trick, wedging a small piece of spork he’s quietly stolen from the mess hall - the dining area - and bent into the right shape, a triangle wedge that fits hard into the track of the groove the door slides along.  He’s pretty sure if the thing ever shut on him he’d hyperventilate at best and react in physical panic at worse and either way - 

either way he’d really not want to explain it in the morning if he made enough noise to draw any attention.  His room is right next to Pidge’s on one side, Keith’s on the other and he just - 

he’s ashamed he has to sleep in the closet and he makes it a point to always hide all the evidence of it each morning.  The last thing he needs is one of them having to haul him bodily out of it, a shaking mess, in the middle of the night because it sealed up like a coffin on him.

But he jams the door open and settles in with the blanket and pillow from the bed and finally - finally - exhales, body sagging.  There’s a solid wall against his back and only one way at him which he can watch in the dim light from the bathroom and - he yawns.  Rolls a shoulder.  Sleeps.

The cat comes.

At first he doesn’t register it exactly.  The mice have taken to visiting him from time to time and so the first few delicate steps on his blanket - and then him - don’t rouse him more than to hum to show he’s paying attention.  

It’s the head butt to the face that finally tells him he’s not dealing with mice.  Not that they don’t head butt too - just - their heads are much smaller.

His eyes jerk open and his hand is already reaching, grabbing for whatever’s invaded his personal space, memories he can’t remember of cramped prison cells, alien appendages, threat and succor in his subconscious and his hand closes on - 

“mew?”

His eyes pop open so fast it actually hurts a little.

Kitten.  There’s a kitten under his hand.  One that’s looking at him with round golden eyes.

One….. that’s green.

He lays there for a minute, looking at the green kitten trapped under his hand and it looks back at him.  Green.  Kitten.  In his room.  Even though the door is locked.  Air vent?

Kittens aren’t green.

Maybe alien kittens are.

If there are lions in space - why not kittens?

He’s aware he’s not thinking entirely clearly - but in his defense its been a bad day, he’s tired - and there’s a kitten looking at him.  Gingerly, he lifts his hand.

“Mew,” opinions the kitten and proceeds to march back up to him - and then up onto him.  The weight of its small paws feel reassuring - even if they are a little on the pointy side, something he discovers when it slips a little and decides to dig in rather than lose its progress.  He grits his teeth and asks himself why he’s letting an alien kitten that could be a cutely disguised brain sucking parasite use his arm and shoulder as climbing practice.

The ‘why not?’ answer isn’t really a good one but it seems to stick.

The kitten settles down somewhere between his shoulders and back of his neck and in very short order it starts to snore.  Very very tiny snores that rumble its little warm body where its pressed down into him and - 

and Takashi Shirogane falls asleep without meaning to.

The next morning its gone.  Of course.  It’s not the first time his mind has given him something so real he can hear and see and smell it.  He still searches his blanket for any green hair.  There’s nothing there.   Of course there’s nothing there.  But when he takes his shower to wake up the rest of the way there are very small red spots on his arm right where little kitten paws started to slip.  He searches the whole room after that and checks the seals on the air vent.

Nothing.

Wary, he remakes his bed and removes the bent spork to stash it in the night stand, letting the closet door swish shut after he gives its entire interior one more careful look over.

Still nothing.

At breakfast he asks, as off-handely as he can, whether the ships scanners can pick up all life forms, even the mice.  Coran is more than happy to give him more details about that answer than he really needed but what he gleans from the intel is that yes.  He still asks Coran to show him and Coran spends the rest of the morning showing Shiro how advanced the scanners in the ten thousand year old castle are.  It only glitches twice.  But it still assures him enough that he decides he made the kitten up and the red prick marks, long faded and gone now, were just from him sleeping wrong.  The only life forms inside the castle are his team, the Alteans, yes - the mice, one of whom is probably doing something Lance wouldn’t approve of if he knew it was in his room - and no, Shiro isn’t going to tell, he and the mice have an understanding by this point - 

and the lions.

Its a little unsettling to realize the lions register as life forms to the scanner and yet it really shouldn’t be.  He knows Black is sentient and alive.  It’s just - metal shouldn’t register as that his earth born brain tells him.  Sentience can live _in_ the metal - but the metal itself can’t be sentient.  Surely?  Except of course it can.  He’s been to the astral plane with Black.  Why on Earth - well, yes, Earth - wouldn’t metal, alien metal from a comet that came from another dimension in fact - if he could accept all of that, how could sentient metal be hard?

It still is and he pushes it aside to deal with, or not, later because that’s not the point.  

The point is, there are no green kittens onboard the ship and Shiro’s brain is probably trying to tell him something with the night hallucination.  He’s not sure what.

He pushes it to the back of his mind for the next week or so.

Until the night after a particularly bad battle, a rescue that almost went wrong, when the bed gives slightly under a light weight as something jumps up onto his bed.  His eyes snap open and in the light from the bathroom he sees a sleek lean shape that is certainly not kitten or mouse sized and his arm is already shifting under him so he can push up and off the bed when - 

it rubs its long body against him and starts purring.

His mind does a hard reset.

Cat.

There’s a cat on his bed, doing a full body walk up his chest rub against him.

It’s red.

He blinks.

“Red?”

It’s not the color he’s asking.

The cat finishes its stroll and butts its lean head up under his chin.  Still purring.  Careful Shiro lays down on his back and the cat hops up onto his chest and - yes, those are very pointy feet. And yet - the weight is still reassuring.  Hesitant, Shiro raises his hand, offers it palm down.  The red cat thinks about it for a minute and then steps forward - ow, that’s his clavicle - and butts its head under his palm for stroking.  Shiro uses his thumb to rub its nose.

There’s another thump on the bed, down near his feet.  Shiro turns his head to look - forgets to keep scratching Red’s nose, - gets nipped over it - goes back to scratching and sees - 

“Blue?”

Because its a fluffy, fold eared grey blue cat with the bluest eyes - well, they look a lot like Lance’s eyes, that kind of blue.  It ‘rowwwwwwls’ at him and proceeds to walk around his body until it reaches his shoulder.  Its eyes blink slow down at him and he gets the strangest impression that if cats could smile this one would.  And then she somehow manages to curl and flop sideways at the same time and he’s suddenly got a soft warm body filling the space from his shoulder to his throat and cheek.  

She smells a little like fabric softener.  

Blue starts purring.

Red nips his thumb because he hasn’t been scratching long enough.

“Mew?” says the tiny voice next to his bed.

This doesn’t make sense and he’d even wonder if it was really happening, except Red’s nips are far too real to be his imagination.  Twisting his head, he glances to the side and yes, there’s the green kitten again but this time he asks:

“Green?” freeing an arm, he stretches it down and - okay, yeah - not a dream.  Kitten claws are a real thing.  But Green scrambled determinedly up his arm and onto his other shoulder and he wonders why Green is a kitten if she’s the same age as the others - probably - except why should lion kitten care about being the same age?

“Yellow?” he asks, because - why not and he almost decides he’s making this all up - except there’s a scrabbling sound from the bathroom and the fluffiest cat he’s ever seen in his life ambles out.  Thanks to the backdrop of light he’s only half sure he can even make out eyes admist all the fluff but it bounces across the room unerringly and launches onto the bed and - 

“uff!  ‘kay.  Ow,” he almost dislodges Green in his automatic attempt to curl protectively where Yellow’s landed on his stomach but Red is still planted in the middle of his chest.  Yellow simply flops across him, heavier than the others and starts to purr as well, sending the rumbling vibration through his stomach that’s now covered in cat.

“I don’t get it,” he protests.  Sentient alien metal lions that can manifest new appendages out of thin air as needed is weird enough.  But - if they can manifest new weapons and armor - why not cats?  He’s not sure the logic makes entire sense but Red has booted Blue out of her shoulder spot and she’s ambled down to curl up next to yellow on his stomach and he’s got four warm living breathing purring creatures weighing him down with their reassuring presence after a day that frankly - as one of his old professors would say ‘sucked like a Hoover’ and - 

he swallows against a suddenly tight throat.  He’s pretty sure they should all be off with their prospective paladins instead of piled on him like a reverse animal hospital for people but - 

he shuts his eyes, surprised to find they’re wet and inhales through his nose in a sniff.  He makes sure he uses his human hand as he reaches for each of them to stroke heads and soft backs and tug gently at a tiny kitten paw.

“Thanks,” it comes out tight.  He’s team leader.  He just - forgets that means he belongs to the team too sometimes.

He’s just starting to doze off when there’s a heavy down dip on the bed and then a large weight settled directly on his chest, larger than the rest.  The weight is a pressure against his chest and - its almost enough to keep his heart from feeling empty and aching.  He cracks an eye open - and feels his heart crack a little too - but its a good pain.  Black looks back at him out of a gold and black mask cat face and circles once before settling down, head tucking under his chin, low vibrating purr boring down into his chest and lungs and steadying his heartbeat.  His smile is a bit watery and he reaches up to scratch the wide forehead.

“I wasn’t sure you’d come,” he tells the lion avatar in kitty cat form.  

Black proves all cats are pointy as a sharp elbow digs into a rib and he coughs laughter before wrapping his arms as much around his new blanket of cats as he can.

“Thanks,” its a whisper.  And he sleeps.


	6. And Still the Stars

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> in case no one has guessed yet, I was completely winging these birthday fics. And when you’re hunting through tumblr trying to find a prompt list what do you inevitably come across? Soul mate aus! Well…. here we go. (warning for shipping mention)

Shiro doesn’t believe in soul mates anymore.  He had one, once.  

She died.

The little spreading tattoo on his wrist stopped spreading, almost before it was even enough to cover the inside of his wrist.  Then the Galra took his arm, and all he had left to prove to himself they’d ever belonged together, that she’d ever existed and loved him and stolen his smile for her own lips.  He doesn’t talk about it and no one asks.  She was a pilot too.  Everyone knows how she died.  He wasn’t the only hero of the Io Incident.  He was just the only one alive to pin a medal on.

And anyone that didn’t know - they know enough not to ask.  Because his right arm is gone anyway and she’s gone and - 

and that’s a part of his life that’s lost forever.

The rest of the team have their tattoos still, all of them simple little symbols just waiting for the right moment, the connection to begin blooming. Shiro’s had been a star that had become a sky full of them that had started the day she’d first kissed him and each night with her had seen more of them peeking out, shining like silver over his dusk skin.  They’d traced them together, finding constellations they both knew, laughing and comparing them to hers on her much smaller wrist -

He doesn’t have any familiar constellations now.  Not on his body.  Not in his sky.  Everything’s alien.  Cut off from him.

He tells himself it doesn’t matter.  He doesn’t need to see his stars on her body to know they were there anymore than he needs to see hers on his.  She wouldn’t have wanted him to carry her like a scar - and he knows she’ll forgive him, one day, for doing it anyway.

Sometimes he still hates the Galra arm all the same.  He would hate it anyway.  Hate it and love it.  A parasite he can’t do without.  A nightmare reminder that lets him reach for his dreams.  How would he fight without the Galra weapon that’s been soldered onto him?  He needs it.

And all it cost him were their stars.

He hates the arm for the discomfort too.  It’s always heavy, its always wearing on him, it chaffs to the point of bleeding sometimes.  And it makes the scar tissue around it itch.  Sometimes that’s the worst part, the itching.  

He only realizes the itching has gotten worse when he notices the discoloring and his stomach jerks painfully in fear when he notices the red and black thin streaks up from the metal.  Like veins.  Like a warning of poison in his system.

It’s not the responsible thing to do but - he ignores it.  Scared of what it means.  That his arm is finally killing him and as horrible as it seems he wavers for a time on whether dying and keeping the arm and his own usefulness is more important than saving his life and losing the arm and his usefulness.  It takes him more days than it should to debate that decision.  He finally admits it though, goes and shows Coran after getting a promise to keep it between them until they find a solution.  Coran who manages to pretend to be more intrigued and chipper than alarmed even if they both know different and runs tests and scans and promises to tell him as he figures it out himself.

Coran who asks him if the blue and green colors are more painful than the black and red ones…

And something in Shiro goes very still and very quiet.

He waits until he’s back in his own room, in his own bathroom and he strips off his shirt and twists.  He’s been avoiding looking at the growing veins, not wanting to watch the poison spread but he looks at them now, edging so close to the mirror that he presses against it.  There are the red lines, growing like thin veins up toward his shoulder but - not just veins.  Now that he’s letting himself look, they twist, curves and sharp edges and sudden vibrant flares.  Craning his neck he can see the blue and green along the back of his arm.  The blue is all waves, impossible to mistake for spreading poison, and under neath the metal he imagines they go on forever, layer after layer after layer on an arm that isn’t there anymore.  The green is swirls, short bursts that branch out and then swirl again, twining around the blue and the red and - 

yeah.  There’s yellow too.  A bit harder to see on his space pale skin but, now that he’s looking, there are geodes of it, perfectly formed intricate geometric shapes, linking one after the other all together, and the red and blue and green weave between them.  His flesh hand lifts and he touches one of those intersections of color.  Feels the slight raise of the scars the marks are starting to cover, like vines growing over old railroad tracks, the warmth of his own skin.  

That’s - not how soulmates work.  And none of his team have their starter marks blooming.  Even with the gloves and jackets and long sleeves the team buries itself in, he’s seen them in training enough to know all of their tiny waiting soul tattoos are still unopened.  And yet - there’s no doubt in his mind at all who each of the colors belongs to.  They’re still small.  Still just starting to spread.  But - he knows.

And then his fingers lift again and stroke - 

Black.  While the other colors weave together the black stands apart.  Like dark ink spills and he rubs his fingers over it, half expecting it to come off on his fingertips.  He knows who the black belongs to and that’s actually the only one that makes sense considering how their minds are linked.  He rubs his thumb over one of the streaks again and - 

suddenly he’s shifting around, trying to angle his body to get the bathroom light brighter on the marks.  

And his throat closes over

Because those aren’t black streaks of ink.

Those are black streaks of space.

And in those black streaks - 

there are stars.


	7. Sunset, Sunrise

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> and here we are, at the end of all things. Or at least the end of Shiro's birthday week. Every end is a new start though. Let's follow it together, shall we?

Dusk had always been his favorite time of the day.  When the work load started to slip away and the sharp daylight began to fade.  He’d seen plenty of sunrises, enjoyed them - but he prefered the softer shades of sunset.  When all the angry, brilliant, loud colors of the day mellowed into the softer, quieter colors of lonely evening.  The world was gentler at dusk, even the sounds of life muted in preparation for the dark and rest.  He loved watching the stars start to peek out, one by one in the glowing gloom.  He knew they were always there, but it took the brightest star in the sky disappearing for them to be visible.  The world lost its glare and everything was coated in the more forgiving shades of violet and blue and grey, of star and moonlight at dusk.

_slowly silently now the moon_

_walks the night in her silver shoon_

There was no evening in space.  No day or night that wasn’t artificially created.  There were no sunsets in space.  The stars never rose, never set.  They never hide behind brighter ones.  Each star is its own sun.

He enjoyed going planetside.  He enjoyed his trips to them - most of them.  At least these days.  He enjoyed exploring their landscape, meeting their people.  He thrived on the feeling of rain on his face, in his hair, the warmth of sun against his space pale skin, coaxing life and color back into it.  He loved the feel of real gravity, so distinct from artificial in a thousand little ways, loved the feeling of being held down to the surface, of knowing it was consistent.  He loved the smell of a thousand alien plants growing, a hundred briny seas, dozens on dozens of electric and snow storms.  He loved behind surrounded by life and bustle and the growing hope of a future.

But his soul was most at peace when he was amoung the stars, drifting aimless in Black with the gravity turned off and the lights dimmed.  When the view screen was nothing but stars.  Stars that went on forever and ever, silently singing their songs in the lonely dark emptiness of space.  He _belonged_ \- in that indifferent eternal in a way he could never fully articulate.  Just - home.  When he was in Black and drifting…..

they were home.

He exhaled a long slow breath and opened his eyes, reaching out to pull himself back down into his seat so the magnets in his suit and the ones in the chair could connect again and hold him in position.

“Thanks,” it was soft but there’s only one creature that needs to hear and he could sense the slow smooth chest deep purr from his lion.  He stroked a hand over the console, not to activate it but simply to touch .

The war was over.  Zarkon was dead, Haggar was dead, their empire was scattered, defeated, surrendered or on the run.  Shiro wasn’t naive enough to believe that everything will be perfect now, not anymore, but - there was a chance.  For the first time in ten thousand or more years, the universe finally had its chance to be something that wasn’t one being’s unbending vision of its future.  

They could go home….

They could go home and back to Earth and he was sure, once things settle, any of them could be anything they wanted.  Matt and Commander Holt could head science divisions or alien liaisons or  - anything.  Hunk would have all the funding he could ever want to build anything his heart called him for - or open his own chain of alien fine dining.  Pidge?  Pidge could frankly rule the planet if she put her mind to it but he suspected it would annoy her too much.  Lance could see his family, have all the acclaim he could ever want, fame and talk shows and dinner parties and fund raisers and life sized posters of him everywhere.  Keith…. Keith could go back to his solitude and find his healing and maybe, finally, now that he knew his answers, make peace with his father and mother and what they had done.  The Garrison would take him back in a heartbeat - as a pilot or a trainer - but Shiro didn’t know that either of those were really his heart anymore.  And Shiro….

Shiro could be anything.  Alien liaison.  Circuit speaker.  Military debriefer.  Instructor.  Even pilot again, if that was what he wanted.  He tipped his head back against his seat and inhaled slow to settle his emotions, exhaled them out just as slow.  Focused his mind past all of that and said the first thing that came out.

“I’m not going back,” it came out quiet and he tasted how it felt in the silent air.  Listened to how it felt inside his chest, his stomach.  His heartbeat thrummed steady in his chest.  He opened his eyes again, looking up at the ceiling of his cockpit.

“I’m not going back.”  He repeated it louder, more firmly, this time and it circled the empty space and settled down around him.  Calmly.  Comfortably.  Solid and real and - right.

It felt right.

The tension he’d carried in his chest since the end of the war relaxed.

His next exhale held a laugh somewhere in it.

“I’m not going back!”

This time it rang out and, as if it had been waiting to keep from influencing him but now that the decision was made it could, Black’s great jaws opened and its roar shook space.  Grinning, Shiro leaned forward and took the controls in his hands, feeling the solid weight of them under his palms through his gloves.  The rightness of him there. The displays jumped to eager life around him.  And he laughed.  For the first time in a very long time - 

Shiro laughed.

And then he shot forward and spun Black as if they were dancing, or celebrating and he felt the swell of the great presence of the lion through his chest like a new sunrise.  There was only triumph in his voice as he said:

“Let’s go home!”


End file.
